অর্থ-নেতি Negation of Economics

অর্থ-নেতি NEGATION OF ECONOMICS 

BY A (S)TALKER

# Debaprasad Bandyopadhyay *

^দেবপ্রসাদ বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়^

 

প্রস্তাবনা

 

তখন ভাষা আন্দোলন নিয়ে মাঠকম্ম (যাকে বলে 'ফিল্ড ওয়ার্ক' আর কি!) চালাচ্ছি (গত শতকের ৯-এর দশকের শেষাশেষি)-- সদাগর-পোষিত সরকার বাহাদুর আর তাঁদের ঋণদানকারী সংস্থাকে আমার পাড়ার হাঁড়ির খবর দিতে হবে তো! নিলে শাসনত্রাসন লাগু হবে কি করে?  তা দেখি কিনা গরিবগুর্বোরা 'নিজের' ভাষা নিয়ে আদৌ মাথা ঘামায় না. তাঁরা অন্যান্য এত সমস্যায় জর্জরিত যে আমার বিদ্যেব্যবসা (ভাষার মড়া-ব্যবচ্ছেদ-- ভাষাকে টুকরো টুকরো করে কাঁটাছেঁড়া। কোনো কিছুকে কাটাছেঁড়া করার সময় সে তো বস্তু---মড়া!) নিয়ে তাঁদের বিন্দুমাত্র মাথাব্যথা নেই. তাহলে আমি কি বা করতে পারি।  জুট মিল আন্দোলনে  (১৯৯৪) যুক্ত থাকার সামান্য অভিজ্ঞতা নিয়ে বাংলা ভাষায় অর্থ-নেতির (অর্থ-নীতি নয়) কাজ শুরু করলাম।  কাজ করতে গিয়ে, খনি-খাদান, ইটভাটা, সব্জিবাজার থেকে চটকল অব্দি ঘুরতে ঘুরতে মনে হলো, (১) সাহেবি মডেল-নির্ভর আকারতান্ত্রিক (ফর্মাল)  মড়া-ব্যবচ্ছেদ বা (২) নেহাতই করনিক কাজ, ভাষার উপাত্ত/তথ্য সংগ্রহ করা (যাকে বলে কর্পাস লিংগুইস্টিকস। খেয়াল করবেন, কেবল তথ্য/কর্পাস জ্ঞানতত্ত্বের মর্যাদা পাচ্ছে। এলিয়ট-এর  Choruses from The Rock মনে করুন।  )। আমার দ্বারা হবে না ।   আমি রোম পোড়ার সময় ব্যায়লা বাজাতে পারব না।  অগত্যা,  পেন-ফ্রন্টের লোক হিসেবে বাংলায় এইসব কাজ করে ফেললাম। আপনাদের বিচারের আশায় রইলাম। (আরো দেখুন: 2014. ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL HEATING AND THE CONDITION OF CREATIVE SPEAKING SUBJECT  Download (.pdf) )

Abstract

(S)talker, the facilitator of this project,  out of his severe guilt feeling as he is a member of the leisure class, executed some self-funded projects related to socio-economic conditions of West Bengal. He, when surveying language movements in India, he found that people are more concerned with their pecuniary condition than that of their language-identity. He then switched over to the understanding of socio-economic condition rather that of formation and imagination of linguistic nation state.

 He had surveyed jute cultivation and industry; mines and quarries; unorganized retail market and shopping mall; brick industry; cotton mills; tea-gardens (still a pending work) in West Bengal, India. Methodologically speaking, he had not followed any statistical sample survey techniques as he wished to reject state-statistics unholy nexus following Foucauldian paradigm; secondly, under the deployment of scheduled survey techniques, subjects were objectified and they underwent metonymic transformation. According to (s)talker, that is a severe violence. Therefore, instead of this technique he followed his own version of ethnomethodology and  snow-ball method for understanding such domains. His findings are as follows:

•        Economics is not a so-called natural science that could be guided by the laws of physics. Thus the universalization of economic laws is not at all possible. Econometric analysis does not able to predict future economic actions.

•        The governmental statistics does not match with the ground-reality narratives.

•        The so-called binary division between organized and unorganized sector does not work at all— a fuzzy zone of organized-unorganized sector has been evolved in the West Bengal industrial scenario.

•        The existence of disembodied (a ghost-like entity) owners of several industries has been observed in organized jute industry, coal industry as well as in unorganized basalt-quarries.

•        Due to automation and manipulative procedures taken by the owners of industries and due to the conversion of surplus labour-socially necessary labour ratio in the form of money-sign, null-workers are “working” without any work in the sphere of economy. The extraction is possible due to the diachronically accumulated surplus labor from the deceased null workers. Null workers exist and do not exist.

•        By the virtue of the labour of the deceased null workers, owners are creating a accumulative space, where one can convert money-sign/commodity to another money-sign, i.e., the domain of dangerous share market. Specters of the null workers are not at all haunting here, where capital to commodity transformation has become merely a place of conspicuous consumption of the minority super-rich people, who have the fetish for the ostentatious display of eco-enemy commodities.

•        The role of state is minimal—collusion of super-rich, a minority, is reigning with the help of ideological state apparatuses.

•        Image processing and remote sensing satellite technologies make it easier to know the mineral resources. The minority hedge account holders with Malthaseian mindset, evacuate, terminate and annihilate the people of the land to be accumulated by creating a simulated war. Hedge account holders are supplying weapons to the (“terrorist”) state and to the so-called anti-statist (though they are also mirroring the statist order of things) “terrorists” ( [s]talker is now collecting linguistic data for understanding the import-export of arms and ammunition. Different terms or anti-language are used both for the fragmented parts of imported arms, which are to be assembled) ---a case of simulacrum or theory of double reflections (anyonyopratibimba) –one is mirroring an-“other”.

•        (S)talker is emphasizing on using local terms to depict the nature of economics as it is found in glocal(global+local) context of West Bengal. If Sahibs could use so-called anti-languages like plum or lemon market, what is wrong with the terms like lokkhibar (no consuming day), tola(illegal levy), pORta(covert weight), gunDa tax (tax to be paid to the goons), bani (the hidden residue of the gold at the time of reselling), Soru line (illegal path) phoRe (the illegal agent), cinHat (signs or a type of archewriting that regulates the parallel market with legal conflict)?

•        The role of political parties here surprising enough. There is no question of ideology as advertised by the respective parties; rather they are using ideology as a mask. They are acting as private limited company as the corporatization of those parties guided by management gurus has successfully established in the dollar-controlled democracy.

•        (S)talker added a variable, viz. ecological factors to analyze the socio-economic situations. He is against the market fundamentalism and industrialization as well as urbanization instead he is an activist of eco-economics.

•        (S)talker’s utopia largely depends on the concept of socially necessary labor, i.e. making one’s own food, clothes and living space. That is the basic education at the vyabaharikalevel.

•        (S)talker is proposing “samavaya” in a special sense of the term. Taking cue from the Nyayadarsana, he is explaining samavayaas an non-detachable contact (samnikarsa) in contrast with “samyoga” (detachable contact). By this term he is not only emphasizing on the samavayaat the vyavaharikalevel, but also at the paramarthikalevel. The concepts of samavaya and paravakthus have completed a full circle in the (s)talker’s system of philosophy.

Neologisms: Null Worker, Disembodied Ghost-Owner, Theory of double reflections (anyonyopratibimba).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

For detailed discussion, kindly follow hyperlinks (blue-colored titles): 

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